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Abstract

This project deals with how notions of urban space in rap music might attach to certain meanings or identification through cultural practices. Through my case studies I present analyses and readings of the Norwegian rap acts Karpe Diem, Jesse Jones and Lars Vaular. In various ways, I argue, these rap acts have shaped their artist identity through notions of social position, urban space and ethnicity. Taking into account the close connection between rap and urban black American culture, one of my main objectives has been to argue that musical relocation is contingent upon the appropriation of black aesthetics. At the same time, though, rap music is continuously developing and reshaping through various contact zones situated within transcultural spaces. In my thesis I posit a conceptualization of the rap text, which takes into account how the mediation and experience of rap music is shaped through the conflation of text, context and intertextuality. From this, meaning can be interpreted by paying analytical attention to how the styles, codes and socio-cultural context of the performers are mediated through musical performance. Hence, my argument underpins my general hypothesis, namely that rap texts deal with how musical experience is shaped through discourse and how these discourses impinge on notions of authorship on several levels. Importantly, popular music provides an important arena for identification through bodily display. The way mainstream popular culture is dispersed through a wide range of media forms, arguably positions the performers’ bodies on centre stage. Through analyses and critical inquiry, I have shown how Karpe Diem, Jesse Jones and Lars Vaular negotiate different notions of masculine identity and cultural belonging through audiovisual display. These displays, I’ve argued, are contingent upon the self-fashioning of the performers and the aestheticization of urban space, which together constitute the conceptual idea of ‘staging the real’ in the rap text.